


Come, My Heart: Beginnings

by lockedout



Series: Come, My Heart (Piece by Piece) [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Prequel to Come My Heart, Slow Burn, This one does not start in the middle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28881543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lockedout/pseuds/lockedout
Summary: This is the prequel to Come, My Heart
Relationships: Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen
Series: Come, My Heart (Piece by Piece) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118093
Comments: 37
Kudos: 80





	1. Amidst Salt & Smoke

The sky was burning green.

The girl closed her eyes tightly, then rubbed at them with the heels of her hands, unsure of what she was seeing. The sight had not changed when she blinked them open again. Before her was a scene of horror.

Green flame leapt against the black skies, its hungry fingers clawing high. So high that they seemed to be trying to pull the silver crescent moon down.

Where Lyanna Stark stood, ash floated lazy on the breeze like fat grey snowflakes. She felt cold sweat trickle slowly down her back. _What am I doing here,_ she wondered. She was barefoot and wore a white dress spattered with gore. The sight of it was disquieting and made her frown. And the dress was not the only thing that distressed her.

 _Summerhall,_ she thought, her eye catching the faint red of the dragons of House Targaryen on the black banners that still flew from some of the towers of the castle. Where else could this be but Summerall? What else could this be but the tragedy that had struck the Targaryens near seventeen years past?

Summerhall had been a beautiful castle. She had seen it illuminated in a book or two. It was lightly fortified, with tall white marble walls set against the red mountains of Dorne. It rose like a white fist on its small hill overlooking the marches and miles down the Boneway from where it had once stood.

“Why am I here?” she asked aloud. But it was a waste of time to ask anything. The gods always remained silent. They were as deaf to her questions as they were to everything else.

 _Dreams are dreams are dreams are dreams, Lyanna, and nothing more,_ she could hear her father’s deep, exhausted voice rattling around in her head as he tried to press the point he was making to her.

There was a time when she believed those words with everything in her. Lord Rickard was her father and he knew better than his silly little daughter. Then there was a time when she wanted to believe those words with everything in her, so she went along with the things he said. She had to. Else the dreams were like to drive her mad.

In her heart of hearts, though, she knew that her father was wrong. He knew little and less about her dreams and he never gave them much weight. Whether she woke up screaming or weeping, shaking and wanting comfort, to him, her dreams were nothing more than night terrors. He would look at her grimly and his forehead would become marred with a frown and his eyes would spark with something unreadable before he tamped it down and sent her on her way.

Maester Walys would come to see her. He would ask her questions about her dreams before he made her drink one of his vile potions with the promise of dreamless sleep on his tongue. There were times she wondered if both her father and the maester thought her mad. 

As time went on and as she grew older, Lyanna came to understand that there were different sorts of dreams. She learned to make the difference between her ordinary dreams and the ones that felt like nightmares come to life. She had done so no thanks to anyone in her life. When it came to these things, she had only herself to count on, making her feel more than lonely.

The dream she was having now was not an ordinary one. There were dark shadows rising tall and dancing all about her. Dreams like this one made her feel as though she had been snatched out of her life and dropped in the middle of something that was much bigger than her and much bigger than her life or anyone or anything in it.

“Wake up, stupid,” she told herself, pinching her arm, making herself flinch from the pain. But the black shadows were still there, growing taller. And so were the flames, dancing grotesquely out of a window and devouring everything within reach.

People were going to die by the score, she knew. There would be nothing but death and sorrow left here once the morning finally dawned.

Walls and wallwalks, buttresses and arches collapsed or broke wherever the wildfire closed around them with its green fingers, raining rocks and marble and pebbles and wood everywhere, hitting and crushing people and smaller buildings alike at will. Outside was no more safe than inside as those who had managed to escape the inferno were finding out.

Even where she stood, Lyanna could feel the debris cutting at her skin and the blistering heat coming from inside the castle licking at her cheeks.

Yet that was where she wanted to be. Inside the castle.

It was where Aegon the Unlikely was with his wife, his kin, and her own great grandmother. And the dragon eggs he had tried to hatch. Those were there too. She took a step forward toward the castle, then another and another before she was knocked out of the way by a knight of the Kingsguard in a soiled white cloak rushing back inside with men-at-arms hot on his heels. The ground came to meet her as she twisted to the side and fell forward. She stretched out her hands at the very last moment, but she still felt the impact of her fall and the sting of the cobblestone as it scraped at her soft skin. When she lifted her head to look for the Kingsguard, all she saw was chaos, and all she heard were screams and wails, making the burning castle feel more than alive.

Every now and again survivors filed out of the castle. Around the corner, a human chain had formed all the way down the little hill where buckets and cloaks were filled with dirt and sand and passed from hand to hand to hand back to the top to be emptied out to smother the wildfire where it raged. _Not enough,_ Lyanna thought, _not nearly enough._

Plumes of greasy smoke coiled upward like great black snakes making the air unbreathable. Her eyes stung and watered making tears run down her cheeks. Lyanna wiped at them furiously with the back of her hand. _A dream, a dream, a dream,_ she chanted to herself. Just another dream in a long line of dreams that made little sense to her. How many times had she dreamt of the Wall and the cold and seas of smoke and stars red as blood raining down from the skies?

In the rookery, the ravens that had not managed to escape their cages were screaming. The others were perched on the limbs of a birch, cawing and muttering at one another. And it seemed to Lyanna that they were commenting to each other on what they were witnessing.

The ground was rocked by explosions and half a heartbeat later, the flames roared like some animal and green talons clawed at the belly of the black sky anew making it glitter green. It reminded her of the northern lights she had read so much about, shimmering green in all their splendor. For a fleeting instant, she forgot where she was and became filled with awe and wonderment.

But these green lights looked like nothing natural. It was like nothing she had read about or anything she had ever seen in her young life.

It was said that the king had tried to hatch the dragon eggs with sorcery and Lyanna could easily believe it. Everything looked and smelled foul here. She did not know as much about wildfire as she ought to, but it seemed to her that the flames were worse than what they should be, as though they had been amplified.

Lyanna got back to her feet, dusted her bloody dress then stood by an elm, its limbs gnarled and bare of leaves. The swing that had been tied to one of its sturdy branches swung slowly in the breeze of the pre-dawn.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Lyanna’s head snapped to her right and she stared incredulously at the pair. An aged man in a white silk cloak, soiled with soot and dust and something that looked suspiciously like blood stood with a woman. A dwarf, she thought at first, so little and stunted she was. _A child of the forest, more like,_ Old Nan's voice whispered in her head. A strong hand gripped the small woman by the collar of her dress, lifting her easily off her feet. “You cannot go back inside.”

“I must.”

“Are you mad? What use will you be inside? Are your eyes as dim as your wits?”

“My eyes are not dim and neither are my wits. The princess . . .”

“This is your fault, crone,” the man said accusingly.

Lyanna knew the man had been tall, but she had not expected that he would be _that_ tall. He stood at more than seven feet, dwarfing the old woman and everyone around.

The woman’s long hair was as white as bone, but her eyes burned red like embers. _An albino,_ Lyanna thought.

“Look at what you have done!” The man grabbed the old woman and turned her forcefully toward the flames. “Look at it! A dragon, you said.” His voice shook with anger. “You said --”

“I know what I said,” the old woman interrupted the tirade with a thin and indignant voice. “I see what I see and what I saw was true, Ser Fool. But I never told him to hatch eggs with wildfire. This was his madness and his alone to bear.”

“ _His_ madness?” The Kingsguard shoved her aside. “I have no time for you,” he said scornfully. “Aegon is still inside with his queen, his son and the others.”

 _“Leave them!”_ the crone commanded him, her voice sounding like a cracking whip. “Their death is here tonight. Theirs and . . . and my Jenny’s too,” she said with a tone so thick with grief and forlorn that it cut through Lyanna like a knife. “Death is here. Can’t you _smell_ it?”

“I can smell death well enough. This . . . this is the sort of talk that caused all this trouble in the first place, woman! You said a dragon would hatch here at Summerhall and he believed you. He _believed you._ You had him all turned around, you had him believing. And for what? For _this?”_ He pointed up at the flames, then he turned around to go.

“Your Aegon had dreams too. His dreams did not lie either. He did not understand them, but they did not lie. There is a dragon hatching as we speak. He is coming forth in fire and blood.” The old woman grabbed onto the man’s arm. “The child is coming, up there in that tower,” she pointed up to it with a thin finger. “Look to the sky, ser. There is the bleeding star. You cannot be so blind as that.”

Lyanna’s heart began to beat furiously against her chest at the sight. There was only green against black not a minute past, yet now, a red comet seemed to hang over the castle. It made a red light all its own, brighter than the wildfire and the lights of the breaking dawn. “Gods be good,” she whispered, feeling as though someone had punched her in the belly.

“Born amidst salt and smoke -” the crone began.

“I have no taste for your riddles,” the knight interrupted her rudely.

“The babe. The dragon. The little prince . . . he must live,” she hissed. “The road leads through him. The salvation of the kingdom --”

The knight made a rude noise. “Ser Gerold has gone with men-at-arms to find Princess Rhaella and the babe. My place is with the king. I have to find him.” His voice broke from emotion. “He raised me from _nothing._ I wasn’t even a knight when I met him. I owe him my life.”

“Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall,” the woman said with a mocking tone. “Your friend is gone. Your Stranger will not be denied his due and must have claimed his life by now. And Aegon may have raised you high, but your life . . . your very life you owe to another. Or have you forgotten him after all these years?”

“Never. I could never forget him.”

“Long ago, you wondered what your life was worth compared to that of Baelor Breakspear’s, he who died for you. You wondered if saving your foot was worth the life of one such as he. A brilliant man, a benevolent prince. The hope of the realm.”

The man stared at her bewildered. “And how in the gods' names would you know what I wondered?”

“The gods may seem aloof because they seldom answer our questions or our prayers, but they are listening, Ser Duncan. They heard you that day when you spoke to Prince Maekar. They heard you and they know. This is what your life was spared for, ser. This is the answer to the question you have been asking yourself these past fifty years. Fifty years is a long time to live with the sort of guilt you have lived with. Only death may pay for life, Ser Fool. He died so that the boy being born in that tower may live. Now do your duty by your princes, Lord Commander.”

The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard swallowed thickly, then nodded his head before he turned around and rushed inside the castle. The crone stared after him, then turned her head to where Lyanna stood and their eyes met and held and held and held. “I see you, wolf girl,” the old voice said softly, making the hairs on Lyanna’s arm stand. She felt herself shiver all over and took a step back away from the albino, then another and another. “You backing away from me does not change that, girl. I see you and you should not be here.”

Lyanna frowned deeply at that and bit down on her lower lip. This was different and frightening. No one had ever seen her or spoken to her in the dreams she had before. Those who she thought saw her usually looked right through her. “Then why am I?” she asked with a trembling voice. “Please, tell me. Why am I here?” But the crone did not seem to hear her.

Instead of answering her question the crone sighed a long heart rendering sigh. “I have lived far too long and I still don’t understand the will of the gods. I have so long left to live still,” she said with regret. Then she turned heel and vanished beyond one of the collapsed walls, leaving Lyanna baffled and wondering, standing alone in the middle of confusion and madness. 

She looked away from where the little woman had vanished and to the burning castle, then ran toward it, swerving this way and that way, avoiding as many people as she could before she managed to get through what was left of the large doors.

She was making her way down a hallway when she heard a sound, like the roar of some monstrous beast, and a cloud of hot smoke and black dust came billowing up behind her, smelling of hell as a furnace wind engulfed her. The screams and the wails were so loud that she had to put her hands against her ears to block them out.

 _Death is here,_ she thought of the crone’s words to Ser Duncan the Tall, when she saw him turn a corner at the far end. Lyanna followed him, her legs pumping hard to reach him and to keep pace with him as he meandered around debris and flame, an arm raised up against his face, trying to protect himself as best as he could.

Smoke was coming thick and seemed to be more dense in the hallways. It was thick and black and made her throat burn and her lungs ache with every breath she took.

Faintly, amidst the noise of the whooshing wildfire and a wall coming down loudly on the other side of her, she heard the wails of a babe coming from behind a closed door.

She knew how this tale ended, but the sound of a newborn crying still filled her with a sense of dread and horror far too great for words. The Kingsguard heard the cries too. Lyanna watched him as he kicked a door open and climbed the serpentine steps four at a time, running. Then he disappeared from her view. 

By the time she reached the top, the debris that had been blocking the birthing room had been removed and the princess was being carried out by the Kingsguard who had knocked Lyanna out of the way earlier. 

Rhaella Targaryen was not that much older than Lyanna. It seemed as though all the color had been leached from her face so pale she was. She was frightened and exhausted. And her gown was stained the same way Lyanna’s was. But hers was spattered with blood and gore from the birth. The princess’s cheeks were streaked with tears and her hair clung to the sweat on her forehead. She was shaking and seemed barely conscious, but she was holding on tightly to the white bundle in her arms, as though she was scared someone would steal it from her. The maester threw a light cover over her and the babe.

“We mustn’t waste time,” the Lord Commander said. “Ser Gerold, we will go through the tunnel. It may still be the safest way out. It will take us two miles north of here and away from the flames. Follow me.”

 _No,_ Lyanna wanted to scream out. The tunnel had collapsed and they would have all died if not for Ser Duncan’s valor.

“Is His Grace outside?”

“Aegon is still inside the castle. I will go back once the princess and her little one are safely out. This is what he would want.”

Gerold Hightower nodded grimly at that and the small group began climbing down the steps. Then everything went dark and Lyanna woke up with a start.

She had somehow fallen asleep amidst the thick roots of Amberly’s heart tree. She was cold. She was thirsty and her legs and back were aching. Her head hurt so much, it felt as though someone had taken a hammer to it.

Her mouth tasted of ash and her skin felt warm to the touch. Her hands and knees hurt from her fall. But she was wearing her night shift that clung to the sweat on her body and a robe over it instead of the white dress from her dream. She sat up slowly and pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and waited for the pain to pass before she looked over her shoulder and stared at the face of the weirwood. She always enjoyed the mocking air the carved face of this tree had, yet now those eyes and that mouth seemed cruel to her.

She turned around and sat on her knees, then leaned forward and ran her fingers along the seam of the mouth and around the eyes, feeling the stickiness of the red sap. 

“Why?” she asked, closing her eyes. But all that came to her was the memory of the sky glowing green and the red comet hanging over the castle like some bad omen. The leaves rustled above her and Lyanna reopened her eyes. “I should have known better than to expect an answer from you,” she told the tree with scorn before she stood and started back to the castle.

If it had taken Ser Duncan the Tall fifty years to know what his purpose was, then how long would it take her to know hers? “I’m just a girl,” she whispered miserably as she hugged herself.

“M’lady, you shouldn’t be out at this time o’ the night,” the guard on duty said when he saw her walking back to the castle.

“I lost track of time,” she replied, pulling her robe tighter about her. She could have spent the night in the godswood and none of these southron men would have found her. She and her aunt were the only ones who sought the quiet of the godswood. “You will not tell my aunt about it, will you?’

The man smiled. “My lips are sealed. But hurry to bed now.”

Lyanna returned his smile and he stepped out of her way. Inside the castle, she found a taper that she lit using the embers in the brazier. And just when she was set to return to her chambers, she heard the septa’s loud snores behind the door and changed her mind. She sighed heavily. She would get no sleep.

She turned around and walked down the long hallway, then took the stairs for the library. The trek reminded her of her nightmare, how she had gone from the yard to the castle, walked down hallways and took the stairs. This castle was much smaller and there were no fires burning here or walls collapsing. And all was quiet.

 _Born amidst salt and smoke,_ she recalled the crone’s words as she pointed up at the red comet above the castle, making Lyanna wonder what any of that was about. A prophecy, perhaps? Was that what the red comet she had seen often in her dreams was about? Was it some kind of a herald? Would the maester know about this? If he did, she thought that he might have forgotten by now, same as he forgot most things these days. The man was ancient and his wits had been leaving him before Lyanna had arrived at Amberly and the Citadel was taking its time sending a new maester much to her uncle’s annoyance.

Lyanna moved the taper slowly, its light flickering across the spines of books neatly lined on their shelves. A few minutes later, she found what she was looking for, an old and dusty tome on the prophecies of the world, just as her stomach rumbled. She pulled the book from the shelf and headed to the kitchen keep for a bite to eat.

She found apples and cheese and a jug of water and sat down. She drank deeply, then cut her apple into slices and wedged the cheese in between. She opened her book, took a bite, flipped to the second page and skimmed through it.

“How is it that you are out of bed?” a woman’s voice came from the entrance, startling Lyanna.

“Septa Bumpkin is snoring loudly enough to be heard all the way to Winterfell,” Lyanna replied.

“That is unkind of you. The septa is a gentle woman and she has a name,” her aunt said. She poured herself milk, took a seat in front of her, and helped herself to the food in her niece’s plate.

Lyanna closed her book lightly. “I am the blood of Winterfell. It is the old gods I worship.”

“I am the blood of Winterfell as well, niece, and my gods are your gods, or had you forgotten? But there is no harm in learning about the mysteries of the Faith, especially if your father marries you off in the south. It would serve you well. You know, I was but a year older than you are now when I came here.”

“A thousand years ago,” Lyanna said under her breath.

“You can mutter all you want, child. My hearing is as good as it was a thousand years ago,” her aunt replied with an edge to her voice. “Nine-and-twenty may seem old to you, but you just wait until you are my age and your daughter says something as disrespectful to you as you just said to me.”

“I do not wish to be married, Auntie. I will not be having children.”

Her aunt rolled her eyes and sighed. “You say this now, but you will change your mind.”

“I doubt that. I wish I were born common.”

“Common girls also marry and have children. And their fathers choose their husbands for them same as Lord Rickard will choose a husband for you. Common girls also have a sacred duty to their families, the same way you have a duty to your House. There is no escaping this, Lyanna. Be thankful for what you have. You get to learn to read and write instead of toiling the field and risking being raped by any man who happens upon your village.”

Lyanna thought about it for a moment. “That is true enough. I am very lucky,” she finally said. “I am lucky, but love --”

“You and your flights of fancy and these notions you have about life. You ought to get your head out of the clouds, dear. What has love to do with anything?” her aunt asked her. “Man or woman, none of us are here for asking. I did not want to leave Winterfell and come to this strange land, but I did as your lord grandfather bid me because he was the Lord of Winterfell. That black bird Lord Bloodraven suggested to him your father’s match to your mother, Lady Jocelyn’s match in the Vale and mine own. And I made the most of it. I grew fond of my lord husband. In time you will even find things to love. And you will love the children he will give you. You only have to let it happen.”

“May,” Lyanna snorted. “I would sooner get on a ship and go to Essos and explore. What do you think Yi Ti looks like? And Asshai? I can become a shadowbinder,” she said with excitement. “I want to see the Valyrian roads, the walls of Qarth, the mazes of Lorath. I want to see Sarnath and Volantis and hear the three bells of Norvos and see the bearded priests. I want . . .”

“Your uncle should never have given you those books,” her aunt said, interrupting Lyanna’s trail of thought. “You could also stay here and visit Oldtown and see the Hightower, go to the Water Gardens and Sunspear, see Harrenhal, Greywater Watch, Highgarden . . .”

“Or I could leave and see the Five Forts, go down the Rhoyne in a poleboat and see Ny Sar and Chroyane. I could see the Great Pyramid of Ghis --”

“Ny Sar and Chroyane have been a ruin for a thousand years. Same for the Great Pyramid. The Valyrians destroyed everything. You ought to know that, you love reading history.”

Lyanna paid her reply no heed. “I want to fly, aunt.”

“You are mad. Next you will say that you will board a ship and go to the smoking ruins of Valyria.”

Lyanna smiled. “Do you think it is true all they say about it?”

“Gods be good, Lyanna. I swear I do not know what goes through that mind of yours at times. The dragonlords reaped what they sowed. No one should go near that accursed shore, least of all you.” She sighed. “This is why you need a septa, to keep your feet firmly on the ground. I will not have anyone say that I sent a foolish girl to her husband’s hall. The septa is here to instruct you in more than the mysteries of the Faith as you well know. Your lord father entrusted me with your education, Septa Dara is part of it.”

“Must I share my bed with her?”

Branda Rogers sipped slowly at her milk and smiled. “What do you think? Oh, don’t look so contrite!” her aunt said when Lyanna’s shoulders slumped. “You have to suffer her one week a month. It’s not so bad.”

“I will no longer have to suffer her when I’m half a world away,” Lyanna retorted. She took a bite from her apple and cheese and opened the book once more.

“Septon Mallador will have a fit if he finds out one of his books was in the kitchens.”

“I am being careful and I will return it to the library before he rises.”

“Prophecies?” her aunt asked her when she lifted the cover and saw the title. Her smile vanished from her face as she looked from Lyanna to the open book.

“I am searching for something.” Her aunt frowned at that. “Something about being born amidst salt and smoke,” Lyanna explained and watched her aunt’s frown deepen. “What is it?”

“You should not fill your head with such nonsense, sweetling. Any reasonable person will tell you that prophecies have a way of coming back to bite you in the most unexpected ways.”

Lyanna shrugged at that and changed the subject. “What was Lady Melantha like?”

Branda stared at her. “Why do you ask?”

“Old Nan spoke of her the night before I was set to return here. She said that she was an excellent archer.”

“She was a peerless archer. My sire always said that she could bend the bow like no one he had ever seen and he saw a lot of bowmen in his day. She was a Blackwood and the bow is their weapon of choice. Even in her old age, she loosed arrows quicker than men half her age.”

“I should like to learn how to bend the bow,” Lyanna said, putting her chin in the palm of her hand, looking at her aunt sweetly.

“It’s enough that I let you go in the yard once a week with the master-at-arms. Be content with that.” Branda closed the book and pulled it toward her, sliding it down to her lap.

“Auntie, please. I will be good.”

“I am sure you can be good without that. The gods have blessed you with beauty and skill and a thirst to learn all sorts of things yet your lace work is abysmal. I want you to apply yourself and listen to what the septa is trying to teach you. Do that and I might consider allowing you at the archery butts.”

“How many hours?”

“This is not a negotiation. The gods are my witness, you are a challenge, niece.”

“It is part of my charm,” Lyanna replied mildly.

Her aunt chose to ignore that. “We received an invitation from Lady Connington, to go and spend a fortnight with her. She has the castle to herself.”

“Is Griff still in King’s Landing?”

“Until he receives his knighthood. I think he still has some months to go.”

It was all he spoke of the last time she saw him. His knighthood and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. That was almost a year ago if she recalled correctly. “As much as I enjoy Lady Connington’s company, I must decline her invitation and remain here,” Lyanna said.

“And why, pray?” her aunt asked her, crossing her arms over her chest.

“My moon blood will be upon me and I would sooner not travel. You know how my mood sours and how my belly hurts. My lady of Griffin’s Roost would find my company most dreadful.”

Lady Branda narrowed her eyes at her, clearly not believing a word her niece had just spoken, but she did not press her further. “I will make your excuses for you in that case. There are enough days left for you to change your mind.”

“I will not.” Lyanna would rather strike west for Summerhall than north to Griffin’s Roost. It would be that much easier for her to leave Amberly while her aunt was away. She would need to look at maps and pilfer food from the kitchens. She would need a new horse for her journey as well.

Too late she realized that her aunt had taken the book from her. “May I have it back, please?” she asked, extending her hand.

Lady Branda shook her head. “I think not. You should not read on these things. Prophecies and visions have led more than one person astray. Heed what happened to the Targaryens and how no one was left unscathed because of the things they believed. They paid a terrible price for relying on prophecy.” She stood and kissed Lyanna’s head. “Finish your food and go to bed. You can use another room and sleep a few more hours if you wish.”

“But, Auntie . . .”

“Do as I say, Lyanna. Nothing good can come from this curiosity you have.”

 _Then keep your book, I have no need of it,_ Lyanna thought scornfully as she followed her aunt with her eyes until she was gone from the kitchens. Insisting on her aunt returning the book would only make her suspicious. It was the last thing Lyanna wanted, to have her on her back. She had plans to make for the adventure she was about to go on.


	2. Diamond in the Rough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two travelers meet at Summerhall.

He had been here half a day, then a night, then a day, and another night. And a day.

Dragonstone was a day sail from King’s Landing and could be as quiet as a tomb. But Summerhall was solitude and tranquility. Peacefulness.

Instead, though, he had found her. This girl who lied about most everything. Like her name and her true identity. This girl who claimed to be a wildling of all things. 

But that was mainly his own doing. 

He had asked her if she was a wildling. It was done half in jest and half seriously and this wisp of a girl had very brazenly kicked the door he had cracked open for her, and stepped in without so much as a blush on those round high cheeks of hers. 

She spoke of the Red Wanderer in the Moonmaid, and the stealing of maidens on that first night, displaying some very odd knowledge about wildling culture, even though she was no wildling.  _ Or maybe she is,  _ he reflected, as he listened to her speak. He could be sure of nothing with that one.

Things had been off to a terrible start between them, though. And it was something that still dismayed him two days later. 

Rhaegar Targaryen had not planned on coming to Summerhall so soon, but there were limits to what even he could endure, and when his courtesies had begun to fail him, he had decided that he would be better served with an orderly retreat from the Red Keep rather than sticking around and risk losing his temper. 

Tywin Lannister had been constantly dogging at his heels, asking to see him for this or that. He asked him to supper, which meant his daughter would be there. He asked him to ride with him up the kingsroad, which meant his daughter would be there. He lavished attention and praise on him to the point of making him uncomfortable. 

And that daughter of his was trying her damnedest to seduce him. He found her endeavors and clumsy attempts at luring him into her trap somewhat amusing at first. He thought she would give up after the number of times he had rebuffed her. But Cersei Lannister did not seem to understand nor did she try to get it through that thick head of hers that he neither desired her nor even liked her. 

The girl was just . . . there. She was another face in a sea of faces. She was just another person who lived in the Red Keep, but who happened to come from a very wealthy and influential family. Her father was the Hand of the King which emboldened some of her behavior. 

Lady Cersei put herself in his path nearly every day. She would loop her arm to his, much to his annoyance and ask if he would be so kind as to walk her to this or that place. He turned her down plenty of times, but there were times when he gave in, because he was still the crown prince and because his mother had raised him well. So he played the part of the gallant prince even though he found the whole business irritating.

Rhaegar understood the game being played around him well enough. But he was the pawn that would not budge and make the moves Tywin Lannister had planned for him. He blamed him more than he blamed the daughter. 

He had been deep in thought as he circled the castle once, then twice, then thrice, following the old path of broken steps that led up the small hill where the ruins of Summerhall still rose. 

He had stopped to look at the walls of the castle, had inhaled a deep breath. The cool crisp air of the late afternoon tingled all the way down to his lungs before he exhaled what became a long sigh of relief to have finally reached his destination. He felt his heart swell and he smiled widely. 

He was home.

The presence of a horse within what remained of the walls of the castle had thrown him off guard as he let go of the bridle of his own mount and walked on silent feet into the yard. He saw a saddle, a bedroll . . . and a person perched in the old elm, legs dangling on either side of a sturdy branch. A heavy hooded cloak hid the face away from him.

Even a couple of days removed from the incident, he still did not understand his reaction, nor did he understand his actions. His mind had gone blank for a heartbeat, and it had been long enough for him to do the unthinkable. 

The realization that it was a girl he had tugged down from the tree felt as though someone had upended a bucket of frozen water over his head. He would have felt bad regardless of the gender, but she was a girl with big and frightened grey eyes. The look in them had been like a gut-punch. Then she had punched him straight on the jaw forcing him to release her.  _ I deserve that,  _ he thought, when he felt her fist connect to his face. 

Then she was gone, and somehow, he thought it was a good idea to chase after her. It had not been his finest moment. He would have been grateful had the ground opened up and swallowed him whole.

All he wanted to do was reassure her that he would not harm her and apologize for his oafish behavior. Instead, he had scared her half to death, big dolt that he was. But the girl was bold, he realized. After punching him in the jaw, she held a dagger to him minutes later and threatened to cut him. She would have tried too, he had no doubt of it now. She would not have been able to hurt him on the account of his chainmail, but she would have tried. 

“I am sorry,” he told her, eyeing the dagger in her hand warily. But fear and mistrust were rolling off her in waves, something he could not blame her for. His behavior just now was the sort that he abhorred. 

He lifted his hands to show her that he had no weapon in them. His sword was still tucked inside his bedroll and the dirk was in the back of his boot. And he was not intent on taking it out. The last thing he wanted was to scare her further. “I did not mean to frighten you.”

She scowled at him. “You think I’m some stupid girl?” she asked him with a shrill voice. “The moment I let go of my dagger, you will pounce. You will rape me and kill me.”

It had been his turn to scowl, but the remark made him more sad than angry. “I am not a raper and I am not a murderer.”

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just sitting in the tree.” 

“You should not be here,” he replied, with some heat. “This is private land.” 

_ My castle, my tree, my yard, my broken walls. My place.  _

No one ever ventured here. The village that had sprung below the walls of Summerhall when it still stood tall and proud and beautiful had been long abandoned, leaving only ruins and more ghosts behind. The smallfolk shunned the land, believing it to be cursed. 

“Well,” she said, and she seemed to hold her dagger tighter in her hand, “neither should you be here. Are you King Aerys? Are you Queen Rhaella? Are you Prince Rhaegar? The last Targaryen to have had dark hair was Prince Duncan and unless you are him, then you are trespassing too. Same as me.”

She had him there, but he could not well tell her that. “You have a mouth on you, girl,” he said. “This is my home.”

“This is no one’s home.” She studied his face carefully before she began lowering her hand very slowly. “It has not been anyone’s home since wildfire destroyed it.” Her voice sounded somewhat sad when she spoke those words.

_ No. My home,  _ he wanted to say once more, but then he would have to tell her who he was and that was more of a hassle than it was worth. “Who did you say you were?”

She had narrowed her eyes at him at that. “I did not say who I was. You grabbed my ankle and pulled me down to the ground. I could have broken my neck,” the girl said accusingly. 

“No one comes around here,” he replied flatly, feeling more than a little awful about what he had done to her. “I was surprised and overreacted to seeing your horse.”

She stared at his face and her eyes searched his own, perhaps looking to see if she would find a lie there. Her arm finally fell to her side and she followed him back into the courtyard where the horses were grazing. He’d given her food and drink, extended guest right to her to put her more at ease. 

The girl who had named herself Daena had been skittish at first. Defensive. For every truth out of her mouth, she told ten lies. She said she was a wildling. She claimed to be a mummer traveling with a troupe through the stormlands. 

She had laughed at the stupid name he had given himself. He had to think quickly of a name and Harper had sprung to his mind and flown out of his mouth before he had time to think of another one.

She knew his tale was a lie as well which put them on equal footing. 

Almost. The girl had a very vivid imagination, a charge no one would ever lay at Rhaegar’s doorstep.

That first night, her tongue loosened up a bit. 

The second day, he sparred with her using two sticks he’d found after he saw the sword she carried and asked her about it. Sparring with her was his way to try and make up for what he had done the previous day. He wanted to make amends and found out she could more than handle herself and hold her own. She was lithe and athletic and capable. 

She had swept aside his stick and slammed her forearm into his chest, surprising him, making him almost lose his footing. She knocked his stick from his fingers with a slash to his wrist, leaving him impressed and in pain. It had hurt like seven hells. “Are you injured?” she had asked him, with some concern.

He had rotated his wrist around, opened and closed his hand. “It’s painful, but no more. Try not to break my bones. If you do, I will not be able to play my harp.”

She had nodded and they had resumed their sparring. But he’d given her no quarters after that. 

She was a good fighter. She would put to shame more than half of the squires of the Red Keep.  _ A diamond in the rough, _ he thought. She had bouts of impatience which could be bad if she found herself in a real fight, which he knew she never would, but she was relentless and tireless and by the time they were done, his tunic had been sticking to the sweat on his back and his chest. 

With a few hours of training a week, this girl would be able to go toe to toe with several knights he knew. But she was a girl, which meant that she would forever be condemned to watching from the sidelines. It was queer, he thought then, how this girl was battling to be able to carry a sword, while he learned to fight out of necessity.

Rhaegar stirred, and opened his eyes. He scratched the itch at the top of his nose and stared up at the clear blue sky. The sun was already high. A couple of hours shy of noon, if he had to guess. He never slept so late, but he had been exhausted before he left King’s Landing, and his night had been filled with queer, malformed dreams. He remembered a dragon circling above the castle, and the dream ending just as the beast had begun beating its wings to land. He had woken up with a start then. The fire had almost gone out and his companion was muttering incoherently in her sleep. It did not even surprise him that she would talk in her sleep. Her tongue had more than loosened and at times, she slipped up with things. 

He wished she would slip up with her true name, though. It wasn’t as though he would ever see her again once she left Summerhall. 

The girl was back in the elm. He saw her legs dangling down, her fingers running down her long hair as she braided it while she stared off in the distance. This time she wore no hood that hid her face from him. She turned her head when she heard him move and looped a ribbon midway down her braid. He watched her swing a leg over to the side of the branch she straddled and jump down from where she had been perched, landing gracefully. 

_As light as a cat,_ he thought, as he rubbed his eyes and yawned, before he sat up and stretched his back. It was his seventeenth name day today. “I am in the mood for fish,” he told her. “What say you?”

Her stomach rumbled loudly enough that he heard it. She blushed prettily at that, making him smile. He did not think she had it in her to blush. “I will take that as a yes,” he said.

“Are we going to fish bare-handed?” she asked him.

“We?”

“I can help,” she replied with a shrug.

Why was he surprised that she would want to help? “It will have to be done bare-hand since we don’t have a line,” he said, standing up. “Why are you smirking?”

“I think you will be worse at it than I am. I think it will be a good laugh even if we don’t catch anything.”

“We'll have to come up with a different plan if we don't catch anything,” he told her, pulling on his boots clumsily, skipping on one foot here and there as she watched him with a raised eyebrow. 

“You know it will go easier if you sit.”

“I shall remember that next time. I am going to wash the night away. I would say that we should dig for worms, but that seems like a fruitless endeavor.” She made a face at that and seemed to shudder. “Don’t tell me that worms make you squeamish!” he said somewhat surprised. The girl caught a rabbit on her way down to Summerhall. It was skinned and cleaned by the time Rhaegar arrived. But apparently worms were a different matter to her.

“I am not squeamish. I cannot abide that queer smell of theirs.”

“It’s not the worms that smell like that. It’s the soil after it rains.”

“Did you perchance read that in a book?” she asked him, pointing her chin at his saddlebag. 

“Who finds room in their saddlebag for books?” she had asked him when she saw him taking them out that first night.

“Me,” he had replied.

“I did, as a matter of fact read it in a book,” he told her now. “It was written by Archmaester Sandeman. It’s a fascinating read. Really.” 

“Sounds like a cure for insomnia, if you ask me.”

“Then it’s a good thing I did not. You talk in your sleep, you know.”

The girl froze in place at that and stared at him. She reminded him of a doe, standing in the woods, listening to the hunters creeping up on her. “I could not make out what you were saying,” he told her. “Nor did I try. I was half asleep.”

She still stared at him from where she stood, hands on her hips. “Even if you could make out what I said,” she told him, “I doubt you would have understood any of it.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But dreams are a window to the soul.”

She snorted at that with derision. “I thought the eyes were the window to the soul.”

“Dreams are too. That’s what I have been told at least.” His grandmother had told him that a long time ago, he recalled vaguely.

“Not my dreams. My dreams are torment,” the girl said dryly. “My dreams are a bane.”

Rhaegar frowned at that. “Prone to nightmares, are you?” he asked. He was no stranger to those. Often, his own dreams left his mind in a state of chaos and confusion. His eyes bore into hers. 

Grey. Dark grey, they were, flecked with a blue as deep as the color of sapphires that seemed to appear and disappear depending on her mood. She had beautiful eyes. Expressive and lively eyes. Troubled eyes, he saw. Eyes that could conceal nothing. 

She was not used to hiding, this one, Rhaegar reflected. She never tried to hide her identity or sought to lie about who she was before. His presence here had forced her into it. But the stories she made up as she went and her more than fertile imagination made him smile. 

But her jaw was set into a stubborn line and he knew she would not answer his question. “Come,” he said. “There's fish waiting to be caught.”

They spent the better part of what remained from the morning splashing around in the water. And Rhaegar could not remember the last time he had fun at all. His life in King’s Landing felt so far removed and as far away as the Red Keep was that he could do what his companion did and pretend he was not who he truly was. Right here, right now, he was Harper, the singer, traveling down to Dorne to play his music in the halls of lords and ladies. 

By the time they came out of the water, they were both drenched to the bone, laughing and breathless. “I caught more than you did,” the girl said as she wiped her face with the sleeve of her wet tunic, smearing her forehead in the process.

“And?” Rhaegar replied more defensively than he had intended to. “Do you want me to congratulate you or would you rather a pat on the back for a job well done?”

“Both,” she said, giving him a cheeky smile. “I will take both and I have not forgotten that you tried to drown me.”

“Drown you? A tad of a stretch, don’t you think?” he said, watching her as she wrung water out from her hair. He had picked her up and tossed her back into the stream because her laughing at him made him feel flustered and discombobulated as he tried as best he could to focus on the trout splashing about as they escaped his grasping hands. “It was the shallow end. You swim like a fish and you enjoyed it. I saw you smile after you resurfaced. Where did you learn? To swim, that is?”

“A smile? You are seeing things, singer,” she said, pulling her loose tunic in front and squeezing more water from it. “My mother threw me in the river and told me to sink or swim, so I paddled as hard as I could to save my life.”

Rhaegar shook his head at that. “I’m certain that’s a lie.”

She ignored him entirely. “How did _you_ learn to swim?” she asked him instead.

He learned to swim on the shores of Dragonstone. The master-at-arms used to sail a skiff out off the island and Rhaegar would jump out into those cold waters. But that was before he knew about his parents’ marriage. It was before he found out about Summerhall and the circumstances of his birth. It was before he understood that his dreams were not like other people’s dreams. It was before he stumbled upon the prophecy and found out about the prince that was promised. How old was he during those carefree days? Six? Seven? “My father threw me in the river and told me to sink or swim, so I paddled as hard as I could to save my life,” he said seriously.

“Well it does make sense to me,” she said, just as seriously as he had. She picked up his dirk from where he had left it lying and handed it to him. “You clean the fish while I dry in one of the sunny corners of the castle.”

“The west side should be all sun by now. Your clothes will be dry in no time.” She rolled her breeches back down to her ankles, picked up her boots, and was gone, leaving only silence in her wake. And once she left in a couple of days, there would be only the music notes he plucked from the strings of his harp to keep him company. 

He would miss her, he already knew. He would miss her boundless energy, her dry humor and her quick wit. Her joy for life. He would miss that too.

Rhaegar always came here by himself. And as discomfited as he had been to find out he was not alone, he had gotten used to the girl’s presence. He enjoyed being around her. Somehow, he felt more alive than he ever did. Perhaps it was her lack of expectation of him. She did not know who he was and that suited him just fine.

Then there was the way that she spoke with him. She spoke with him as though she had known him all her days. 

Dinner came. The girl was dry, but her clothes looked a proper mess. He imagined he looked as rumpled as she did. But he was free to look however he wanted to look here. Here, in this very moment, he could taste freedom on his tongue like he never tasted it before. 

They ate their fish as the sun was beginning to sink in the west and shared some of their provisions as the girl chatted away. When they were done, she stood and looked up to the sky. “I will be going for a walk. I will see you later.”

“Be careful where you set your feet. There are vipers and scorpions the further south you go.” _And don’t be too long or go too far,_ he stopped himself from adding.

She only nodded her head before she took leave of him. And silence surrounded him once more.

And silence lingered and lingered as he stood on one of the broken walls. The swollen red sun had finally set behind the mountains of Dorne, the moon had risen, a waning gibbous, and the sky was slowly filling with stars and the girl had been gone a couple of hours already. How far could she have walked, he wondered, feeling worry rise inside him as he turned east and west and north and south, hoping to catch a glimpse of her returning. 

“It’s not your concern if she wants to wander off on her own,” he muttered to himself. It wasn’t as though he was in charge of her, and she seemed to be fiercely independent. She was nothing to him, but he had grown fond of her. Perhaps it was the ease of her manner or her unassuming personality that he liked so much.

What if something happened to her, though? What if she was stung by a scorpion or bitten by a viper, he wondered. “Nothing’s happened to her,” he murmured to himself. “She lost track of time is all.”

Pushing the dark thoughts from his mind, he climbed down from the wall and stalked past the shell of the tower where he had been born. Parts of the tower had been blown off clear in this section of the castle. He crossed into the courtyard and fed the horses oats, then he picked up his harp and went to what used to be the ballroom.

He sat on a ground covered with moss and started running his fingers on the strings of the harp. He started humming, then he began to sing. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her creeping into the ballroom quietly. The ball of worry in his stomach dissipated as a wave of relief washed over him. The girl took a few steps inside the ballroom, then stopped and leaned on what was left of one of the walls and listened to him sing. 

When the song was over, he put the harp down and turned toward her before he stood. _Where have you been,_ he wanted to ask her. But instead, he looked at the bundle of flowers she had gathered. Daisies, both white and yellow, bluebells and forget-me-nots, morning glory, crocuses, honeysuckles, beautiful yellow irises and more. She had walked north by west to pick these, he knew, at least an hour upstream and another hour down the other way.

When he chanced a look at her face, he saw it was streaked with tears that she began to wipe with her sleeve in earnest, leaving dirt behind. “I did not take you for the crying sort,” he said.

“I am not,” she replied.

“It’s just a song.”

“A very sad song,” she told him. “Your voice, though, it reminds me of the stories Old Nan used to tell me and my brothers about the children of the forest.”

“Old Nan?” Rhaegar asked her. _Brothers?_ That cat was beginning to crawl slowly out of its bag. So this girl had some old nan and brothers.

The girl worried her lower lip between her teeth. “She is a wet nurse who is near eighty years in my village.”

He almost snorted at the blatant lie. If this stranger was from some village, then he was the son of a dockside whore. “The children of the forest are gone from the world.”

“We don’t know that for certain," she said. "The age of men was upon them, Old Nan always began her stories about the children. First the men took the rivers. And so the children hid in the forests. When they came for the trees, the children fought. But men were too powerful for them, so the children hid in the caves. And the swamps. Some went into the mountains. Some into the underearth tunnels. Then men built mines and came for the iron hidden there. So it has been for thousands of years, until there was no more of them.”

“Do you think they are still in the caves and the mountains?”

She looked at him strangely. “Perhaps. Perhaps they keep away from men for fear that we will take what they have left away from them,” she said. “Westeros is far and wide and the map is not the land and we know even less about what lies beyond the Wall. They say there are giants and mammoths, direwolves and ice dragons on the other side. And the Others. Them too.”

Rhaegar felt a chill run down his spine and he swallowed thickly. He did not care to think on or discuss the evil that lived beyond the Wall. “And what is it about me that reminds you of the children of the forest?” he asked her.

“It’s the way you sing,” she said, “Old Nan says that the children made music so beautiful that it made you cry like a little baby just to hear it.”

She was staring at him intently, studying his face. “I don’t have their blood,” he said, “if that’s what you are trying to puzzle out. And all these things this old nan spoke of, the children allegedly did it with magic. Is that why you were crying? Because I make beautiful music?”

“You flatter yourself, stranger.”

“You’re the one who was crying. And it’s Harper,” he corrected her.

“That’s not your real name, so I will not use it, my lord.”

“No. I am not a lord.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You are quite right. Of course all singers can read.”

“And why not? It’s not as though you can’t read either. I am certain wildling girls don’t sit around in their hovels to learn to read. The map is not the land. Is that a lesson your lord father taught those brothers you mentioned? Let’s stop pretending you are anything other than some lordling’s daughter, born and bred in some castle, who sat at lessons with a maester.”

She shrugged. “And let’s not pretend you’re not some lordling’s get.”

_Not a lordling’s get,_ he thought, _but a king’s get rather._

It was his turn to shrug. “You are welcome to believe whatever you wish to believe.”

“And I will keep doing just that. You sing beautifully.”

“Thank you for saying so.”

“I’m sure it’s not the first time someone compliments you. You have a beautiful voice. I never heard that song before.”

“It's fairly new.” 

“Did you make it?”

“I did,” he said, and then, “Can you dance?” he asked her before he even knew he was asking.

“Even milkmaids can dance.”

Rhaegar narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you a milkmaid now? Wildling, mummer . . . milkmaid. Your story seems to change an awful a lot.”

“No more than yours, liar. I can milk a cow and a nanny goat, I’ll have you know.”

“No doubt, stranger.”

“It’s Daena,” she corrected.

“That’s not your real name, so I will not use it, my lady. And you did not answer my question.”

“Anyone can dance,” she replied. 

“Show me what you can do,” he said, presenting his hand to her. She looked down at it, seemingly considering his offer but made no move to take it. He dropped his arm. “I apologize if I made you uncomfortable. It was not my intent.”

“You did not make me uncomfortable. It’s just that there is no music.”

“A girl with a vivid imagination like yours should be able to get on without music. But I’ll take care of it,” he said. She put her flowers down and took his hand when he gave it to her. He pulled her gently toward him, close enough that they could dance together, but not enough that she would feel uncomfortable or threatened. 

A step. One here and one there and then another and another, moving in tandem. He spun her away from and back to him as he hummed. Whatever sadness she felt at hearing him sing was gone. The girl giggled as she spun away from him, so gracefully, so light on her toes. And for the span of a heartbeat, Summerhall came to life all around them. The walls grew as tall as they had once been, the torches in their sconces burned brightly on the walls and his ghosts danced all around them, dressed in their finest clothes. 

And this girl he was dancing with. She was so sweet to look upon and that joyful smile on her face as she looked up at him . . . whoever she was, she was nothing like the ladies who milled about the Red Keep, trying their very best to catch his eye. It made him sad knowing that once she left Summerhall, he would never see her again.

“Where did you learn to dance like that?” he asked her after he let go of her hand.

“Where did you learn to swim? Where did you learn to dance? You ask a lot of questions, singer. I learned by watching if you must know,” she replied with a shrug, before she picked up her bundle of flowers.

“I don’t know why I expected a different answer.” But her answer made him smile anyway. _Who are you,_ he wanted to ask her. _Where did you come from?_ They stared at each other. “I was planning on staying up to watch the sun rise,” he said. “By the river. Would you care to join me?”

She nodded her head without hesitation. “You go. I will bring the cloaks.”

They split up. Him in one direction and she in the other. Minutes later, she found him by the stream, sitting against the eastern wall. She handed him his cloak and sat a couple of feet away from him. “The sunrise here is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen,” he told her.

“Where else did you see the sunrise?”

“Across the narrow sea,” he said. “Braavos, though the fog makes it a little difficult. Lys, Tyrosh, Volantis. I have seen it from different locations in Westeros.”

But the most beautiful sunrise he had ever seen may have been beyond the Wall, during a three day journey in the haunted forest. 

He had stood in a forest turned to crystal. The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. _So there is magic beyond the Wall after all,_ Rhaegar remembered thinking, as he filled his lungs with the cold air of the morning and returned to his saddle.

The girl simply nodded at that and gazed at his face. “You have dirt on your cheek,” she said, wiping it away with her sleeve. She grimaced. “And I just made it so much worse. I should have left it alone.”

He laughed. “Dirt never hurt anyone.” He sobered. “Why are you here?” he asked her.

She shrugged, looking south, toward the Boneway. “Passing through, I suppose.”

“Are you running away?” He could take her back to the Red Keep with him if she was. She could be a companion to his lonely mother. A girl like this would put a smile on her face. But then, he reflected, her family might accuse him of kidnapping her.

“I wish I were running. I wish I could get back on my horse and ride all the way down to Planky Town, get on a ship and never look back.”

“Is that what you really want?” he asked her softly.

The girl looked to be fourteen or close enough to make no matter, and everything made her vulnerable. Her youth, her sex, that sweet face of hers, her high birth. And her accent marked her. Her speech was frosted with the accents of the north, but he heard a hint of the stormlands brogue there too. He did not know if it meant that one of her parents was from the stormlands and the other from the north, or if she was from the north but lived in the stormlands, or if she was from the stormlands, but lived in the north. What he knew, though, was that this girl was a long way from home and he did not relish the idea of letting her go off on her own. 

She gathered her knees under her chin and wrapped her arms around them then gazed at him. “What I want is freedom. I want adventure. I want to go to all those places I read about in _Wonders_ and _Wonders Made By Men_. I want to see the Titan of Braavos and I want to walk the Valyrian roads. And you? What do you want?”

“I want peace of mind,” he said without hesitating. “I want to know that I am doing the right thing.” People died at Summerhall so that he may live. He owed them a debt that he could repay only by serving his purpose. 

“Peace of mind,” she repeated, wistfully. “Now wouldn’t that be something.” She sighed, long and heavy, as though she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. “I think my father is looking to arrange a marriage for me,” she finally said with a small and vulnerable voice.

His kingly father could be negotiating a marriage for him right this instant, and Rhaegar wouldn’t even know. He did not know what his father had in mind or if he would consult him before he bound his son’s life to some girl. 

Cersei Lannister was entirely out of the question. Rhaegar had no use for a schemer, a liar, and an opportunist. Tywin Lannister was grasping for more power. He wanted a grandson on the Iron Throne for some grand Lannister era. The Lord Hand had already been rebuffed once, but that was some four years past and Lady Cersei was back in King’s Landing now which meant that Lord Tywin had all but given up on this dream of his. 

Elia Martell was sweet. Everything Cersei was, Elia was not, but the Dornish princess's health was a concern. It seemed cruel to put the future of House Targaryen and the future of the realm on her shoulders. No one needed that sort of pressure.

Catelyn Tully had been betrothed to Lord Rickard Stark’s heir for nigh on a year. But the Warden of the North had a daughter who lived in the stormlands. Lyanna. 

From everything Griff said about her, and he always had plenty to say whenever he returned from Griffin’s Roost, Lyanna Stark sounded exhausting. But all Rhaegar remembered from his visit to Castle Black was a sad and lonely girl, who mostly kept to herself. But she was older now and the tales he’d heard were other. The girl was wild, Griff was wont to say. She was wild and willful and reckless. She behaved like a girl who was brought up in a tavern rather than one who was born in a castle, to a family that could trace its lineage back more than eight thousand years.

Rhaegar was not even sure he could keep up with her. _No,_ he thought, _a girl like that is not made for the Red Keep. It would be no better than a prison for her._ The last thing he wanted was a miserable wife. 

But someone like the girl sitting beside him. He would not mind that at all. She would drive him mad some days, and would drive him to distraction other days, he had no doubt, but he thought it would be a good life.

“Every girl I’ve ever known wants to be married. Don’t you want that too?”

“Marriage is the furthest thing from freedom and adventure,” she replied. “You know when you are riding and you arrive at that fork on the road --”

“You can choose to go right or left or maybe continue straight on down the road,” he said. “You want to choose your own path, not the one that was chosen for you. I understand that well enough.” 

She looked at him with eyes that looked as blue as the sea at sunset and nodded her head slowly. She looked to be on the verge of tears. And he would have thrown an arm around her shoulders to try and comfort her, but he was no more than a stranger to her. “You have a right to your anger. You have a right to your sadness,” he finally said. 

“I am neither angry nor sad.”

“Your eyes give the lie to your tongue,” he replied. “All I can tell you is to take your joys where you can find them.”

“Is that what you do? You don’t look like the happiest person. There is sadness about you. I can see it in your eyes too.”

“My harp makes me happy. And so does this place. As to the rest . . . It often feels as though my life is empty.” He knew he was alive, though he did not feel alive. The joys people found in food, or drink, or between a lover’s arms were stranger to him. His harp gave him more solace than joy. His books allowed him to escape. But that never lasted. He was forced to admit to himself that this was the longest he had gone without feeling the burdens that kept him up at night. And it came in the company of a girl he had known only three days and would never see again. 

He stared at the girl’s face intently. She felt familiar at times, like he knew her from somewhere. There was something there at the edge of his memory that he could not quite catch whenever it came fleeting.

“An empty life. That sounds so sad,” the girl said. 

He shrugged. “That’s what happens when you choose duty above all else. This is the way of the world, wildling girl. We do as we are bid by our fathers just as they did as they were bid by their fathers.” He paused. “ And who will your father marry off to?” he asked her with a small smile. “The miller, the swineherd, or the fieldhand?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “How vexing. Your sense of humor is peeking. That's two days in a row now. You ought to be more careful with that.”

He chuckled. “Absolutely. Otherwise people might think that I am not as humorless as I seem.” He looked at her seriously. “There is nothing wrong with being afraid of the unknown. Marriage means change. And that sort of change is frightening.”

“Change doesn’t frighten me. I know what change is and I can adapt to it easily enough. I would sooner not marry is all. I don’t want a husband who takes me on because his father commanded him. I want to be able to look at my husband and know that there is more between us than that. I want love.”

“What has love to do with anything?” he asked her. Whatever she expected him to say, Rhaegar thought he’d fallen short of it. “Whatever songs the bards make, life is other. A bard’s truth is different.”

“Bards do tell pretty lies,” she replied. 

“Not just bards. Lying the way you do is unbecoming,” he said, poking her shoulder with a finger.

She snorted then gazed off in the distance. “I will do my duty. But I will do it kicking and screaming.”

“I believe you,” he said, softly. “I was told a long time ago that marriage is for duty, not love. So you keep that in mind in all your interactions. Harden your heart if you must.” 

The conversation had gotten far more serious and deeper than he had anticipated. He was not the sort of person who opened up about the things he felt. Arthur Dayne had been his longtime companion and confident. They understood each other and understood the weight of destiny well enough. 

He looked down at her bundle of flowers and the stems she was weaving together with careful fingers. “What are you making?”

“You’ll see when it’s done. Are _you_ running?” she asked him after a moment of silence. “Are you running from your home and duty?”

Rhaegar shook his head slowly. “Would that I could.” He would abandon everything and go. But there were things he could not bring himself to do. And abandoning the realm was one such thing. 

The girl studied his face carefully, then looked down at his harp, and he thought she might have an inkling as to who he truly was. “They say Prince Rhaegar comes here often,” she finally said.

“Is that why you came here? Were you hoping to find the prince?” he asked her, feeling some disappointment.

“No.” The girl hesitated. “My great grandmother died here,” she finally said. “And her sister as well.”

“Oh.” What else could he say to that? He almost asked her who these women were then changed his mind. “I am sorry to hear that. How does it make you feel seeing where they died?”

“I’m not really sure. There is something beautiful here,” she said, looking at the reflection of the moon and stars on the water that flowed in front of them. “I thought it would be sad here, but it isn’t. There is life everywhere I look. The wildfire could not destroy everything, nor could it kill everyone. If a newborn can survive the destruction wrought that night, then anything can. In all the destruction and the uncertainty, hope came along too. There is always hope in the bleakest of times. There is some of it here too, don’t you think?”

Rhaegar swallowed the lump in his throat and gazed at her face for half a heartbeat before his gaze flickered to the fireflies blinking over the reeds. The things she said stirred something in him. He would pay good coin to know who she was. “Maybe.”

“There,” she said, showing him what she had done with the flowers. “See?”

“A crown?” It made him smile. There was something sweet and endearing about this girl, he found. Half-wild and half-dreamer, half a boy and half a girl. A girl who seemed to love flowers but who dreamed of being able to do the same things he and her brothers did. “May I?” he asked her and the girl handed it over to him. “What’s your favorite flower?” 

“I love them all,” the girl replied. “Each is beautiful in its very own way.”

Rhaegar turned the crown of flowers over in his hands, examining her work. “It’s very pretty,” he told her, then put it on her head. “There. This is where it belongs. You do have many hidden talents after all.” 

The girl smiled at him and adjusted the crown of flowers on her head. “I enjoy trying my hand at different things. You are a very good singer. Any castle would be lucky to have you.”

“That is very kind of you to say.”

Hours later, dawn came. Fog drifted off the river, wending through the reeds like pale white fingers. And the beauty of the sunrise. Stars strewn across a purple sky, the grass glittering like glass in the morning dew, the red splendor in the east.

“I am so glad I came here,” the girl whispered beside him, her eyes fixed on the canvas of color above them, and Rhaegar felt absurdly grateful to be alive and here, sharing something so beautiful with this stranger who no longer felt like a stranger to him.

_As am I,_ he thought, looking at her before turning his gaze back to the sky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has gone up a day ahead of schedule. You can expect the next one on 03/20/21.
> 
> Everyone who took the time to leave comments, kudos. Thank you! 
> 
> Stay safe, wash your hands, wear a mask!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone,
> 
> Those who read the first (only) story I wrote in this universe, this is the prequel as promised, which shaping up to be a multi-chapter. 
> 
> New readers, be welcome! I recommend that you read the original story before you dive into this one. So while you wait for new chapters here, you can head to part 1.
> 
> I will add more tags for characters as we go along.
> 
> Cheers everyone!


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